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Knowage vs Pentaho Business Analytics vs Tableau Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Knowage is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau Enterprise is 15.4%, down from 19.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

AM
Easy to customize, cross-platform capable, and very stable
The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills. When we come to the integration with the single sign-on facilities, that part is very challenging. In Power BI and other tools, it's very easy to integrate with active directory and single sign-on, and identity management is very easy in other business intelligence tools. However, when it comes to Knowage, it's a bit heavy, it's time-consuming sometimes, it's not very fast, and definitely not as fast as other business intelligence tools in terms of getting graphical reports. The solution could be cheaper.
Mir Gulzar Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Excels in handling unstructured data, helping organizations navigate through different storage systems
Pentaho can help organizations by providing them an insight of their unstructured data using one platform(Pentaho Business Analytics). The features are almost identical to other BIS platforms but to me, customers can benefit as it has a community version with most of its Enterprise features. It also has a free limited-period trial version. The other feature that I would like to share here is, that users have access to a complete spectrum of data from different sources with the system’s adaptive big data layer, which takes the source of the data into account. The software is built on an open architecture and can be integrated with multiple systems. However, Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics has been acquired by HDS which offers an Enterprise edition for organizations that also need to meet product compliance.
Uzair Faruqi - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of developing dashboards and receiving strong technical support have enabled efficient data visualization
Introducing custom features, such as NLP-based reports, is not very good in Tableau. My MD has been asking us for a way to write in natural language to request reports that the system should generate, but that isn't very effective with Tableau. As a developer, I can develop an on-demand report in Python quite easily, but exposing a REST API on the Tableau platform is not a very easy task. AI enablement is an area for improvement for Tableau, and that is something they might have to work upon. I have heard that ThoughtSpot is quite better in this regard, but the cost of ThoughtSpot is much higher. ThoughtSpot has lots of natural language-based report generation features that Tableau lacks.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We can easily do our own customizations."
"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"I can't name the features the way the Knowage community calls them because I still don't know the lingo. However, I can describe them. I like the ability to join more than one report, set all fields on one end, and replicate that on the other reports. I like that a lot. I think it's one of the features that got me using Knowage. They have tables, and I like that too. They took SQL scripts and many other scripts and enabled them to even correlate with Python. That's also one of the best things about Knowage. You could also decide to get information per user role, and this is also a feature that I like in Knowage."
"The embedding feature is great."
"We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."
"Pentaho is an analytics platform that can be used when an organization has a lot of big data storage systems already installed and needs to manage and analyze that data. It has a specific use case for unstructured data, such as documents, and needs to be able to search and analyze it."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' best features include the ease of developing data flows and the wide range of options to connect to databases, including those on the cloud."
"The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The interface of Pentaho Business Analytics is easy to use and does not require high-level skills to operate the tool."
"Easy to use components to create the job."
"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced."
"Its dashboarding is the most valuable. It is easy to create visualizations and dashboards and import Excel sheets and ESP files in Tableau as compared to other tools."
"Analysis is now more visual than in the past."
"Self-service is most valuable. Users can pick up quickly and do the resolution. There are a lot of out-of-the-box features, and it satisfies most of the needs. If users are properly trained, they can deal with any situation."
"This service is the combination of very pleasant, interactive graphical visualizations along with the application of advanced statistical models (in some cases)."
"Tableau's most valuable features are user-friendliness and have a connection between multiple source systems. You can publish a report by using Tableau Public and there you can make your data online, not only batches of data, you can use it as an online analytical tool."
"The solution deployment was straightforward."
"Any feature I am looking for usually is part of the next upgrade within a few months. They have a very good dynamic evolution."
"It is a complete solution allowing a lot of integrations, different graphics, multiple operations and analyzes our date and gives us meaning from it."
 

Cons

"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"The dashboard components could be better."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"It would be better if more resources were available to help us learn how to use it. I wanted to use Knowage for a more extended period, but learning materials around the product were not really available and were not really straightforward. I've also seen inconsistencies between versions. For example, under the tools, especially in the cockpit, the way you create reports is now different. You will also find some configurations within a particular state, like a line chart, which differs from version to version. I think consistency is an essential feature in a product, especially for business intelligence products."
"Pentaho Business Analytics is hard to learn and not suited for initial users as it requires knowledge of operating systems, Java, and other technical skills."
"Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive."
"Logging capability is needed."
"The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java."
"Version control would be a good addition."
"Deployment is not simple. It is not simple because we are dealing with a lot of data; we are dealing with a lot of storage. So, it's not a simple process."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' user interface is outdated."
"We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost."
"At the organizational level, increasing the servers' capabilities to support us as an enterprise tool."
"I think Tableau could be improved with cheaper or more flexible licensing, though this is a generic improvement and applies for any product. It would be better if they had more flexible payment and licensing plans so that they could suit small- and mid-sized organizations."
"Could have more integrations with different platforms."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"Include forecasting on table calculation fields."
"More integration with Python or something related to machine learning would be a good improvement."
"When compared to Power BI, it is less user-friendly."
"Maybe the price could be a bit cheaper, especially if you're a personal developer that uses Tableau just to explore smaller data sets and you're not a company or something like that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."
"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."
"Free and commercial versions are available."
"Pentaho is expensive ."
"We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."
"There is a license required, we pay an annual license which is priced fair."
"For data extraction and analysis, Tableau is better than any other tool I have used with the same pricing model."
"The initial cost that is set according to CPU cores is expensive."
"One of the biggest drawbacks of Tableau is the price, it is expensive. The price should be reduced."
"There is a license for the use of this solution and it is on a per-user basis. The server is free but the users you have to pay for."
"This solution is a bit expensive. The pricing options have become more difficult over the years. I think they are bordering on pricing themselves out of the market. They need different pricing options for various-sized businesses. Where my organization is a large organization, we are happy to pay a higher price because we can leverage the products very extensively. For smaller enterprises, different pricing options would be good."
"I recommend that you discuss your needs with the salesperson and try to negotiate the price."
"There is a license for this solution and we pay on an annual basis."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
16%
Hospitality Company
13%
Insurance Company
11%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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Earn 20 points
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I wou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?
Pentaho Business Analytics offers the best value for money. While improvements can be made in some areas, particularl...
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
From an integration perspective, Pentaho Business Analytics is not the best tool on the market. There are things done...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use....
 

Also Known As

SpagoBI
Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FIAT Group, Italian air navigation service provider, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Telecom Italia, ASL Genovese, San Giovanni Battista University Hospital
Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
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